Elfimel ᑓ: “Newcomers, like you? Of course you will make mistakes — you are not Elfimel! You are not of Heaven! How could we expect you never to make mistakes? Besides, if we complain too brightly to you, you will kill us!”

Este: “Actually, we won’t kill you.”

Grinwipey: “Actually, we’re going to put the smickenhead all over your dornies, so I hope you’ve got a croo-hoo for your croquet!”

Elfimel ᑓ: “What?”

Phaniet and Este: “What?”

Grinwipey: “Just movin’ my mandibles.”

How do you guys get by with only one potty?

Elfimel ᗣ: “… how many potties do you need at once?”

Phaniet: “I think a reasonable architectural design has one for every handful of people in a dwelling-place It avoids lines and awkward accidents.”

Elfimel ᗣ: “Lines? I’ve only had to wait for it twice… have you had more trouble, my sisters?”

Elfimel ᗭ: “No, I think not.”

Elfimel ᗯ: “Yes, but I am a greedy girl, I eat and eat and eat. I had a whole large banana and seven large prens just now, did you know that? And a peach and a pineapple earlier. And that is just from Large Fruit! I eat, I eat and eat, I eat and eat and eat. So I need the potty often — so often! Why, once I used it twice in a single cycle! Can you imagine that?”

Este: “A cycle being hours to weeks long? How often do you use the lav, then?”

Elfimel ᗷ: “Oh, maybe once in three or four cycles if they are long, or correspondingly many more if they are short.”

Este: “That’s … not very often. I must ask an indelicate question: how long a visit is it, O greedy Elfimel?”

Elfimel ᗯ: “A very long one! I must walk to the center of Heaven, then to the toilet, produce my delightfully-perfumed fist-sized lump of solid by-product, and then walk to the center of Heaven and back to the chamber I started! Or, if everyone has moved on in the cycle, from there to the next one!”

Este: “One small lump of solid waste? That sounds less than all that food.”

Elfimel ᗿ: “Oh, it is, much less. If we were required to excrete as much as we ate, it would be quite a chore! In that case, we might well need more streams!”

Elfimel ᘞ: “Oh1 I know a thing! Offworlders sometimes produces liquids as well as solids. We do not! Instead, the excess liquids of our bodies are dripped out gently and slowly through our vast tails, where they produce the sweet and distinctive perfume that accompanies us always?”

Phaniet: “That scent is a waste product?” She had noted, several times, that Elfimel smell quite nice.

Elfimel ᘞ: “Yes!”

Phaniet: “I think your creator god did a very beautiful job on that aspect of your bodies!”

Who told you what is heresy? And what happens to heretics? If things suddenly changes so there was no heresy would you do new things?

Elfimel ᾂ: “Mircannis and Lenhirrik and Thefefy told us these things!”

Elfimel ᾃ: “Some of them at least! Mircannis herself told us we had no names and no need of names!”

Elfimel ᾄ: “Nobody needed to tell us the other ones! We figured them out ourselves!”

Elfimel ᾅ: “The offworlders helped though. Before the first visitors came, we didn’t even know about clothes. Now, we know that clothes are heresy for Elfimel! Isn’t that wonderful!”

Elfimel ᾄ: “Maybe you’ll teach us some new kinds of heresy too.”

Elfimel ᾂ: “Just what we need. More things we can’t do.” Elfimel rarely are bitter or ironic, but this one managed to be.

Elfimel ᾅ: “Pish, pish! Do not be so ungrateful! We have eternal life in a donut of joy! What are a few restrictions, compared to the endless joys of fruit and pyramids, flowers and fountains, and the love of your fellow Elfimel?”

Elfimel ᾂ: “Heaven is a beautiful world — the most beautiful world, by Thefefy! — but we have never seen another world. If it were not heresy to do so, I would like to see one, and thereby … hush, my sister, let me finish … thereby see by contrast how beautiful and perfect Heaven is.”

Elfimel ᾅ: “You have carefully phrased that to avoid any taint of heresy. Nonetheless I find it suspicious. It is orthodox, but it is not very orthodox, and as an Elfimel in good standing you really should be careful to be very orthodox.”

Elfimel ᾂ: “I am very, very orthodox. I have never said a word that Mircannis or Thefefy or anyone could possibly object to. You, however, are a lump of unripe fruit, an incompetent and glory-seeking player at games, a lover who cares more for her own pleasure than that of her partner. Why do you try to limit what we can do? Why do you beg the gods for more laws, and, when they do not answer us, invent your own? For I suspect it is you who who came up with the law about clothes!”

Elfimel ᾅ: “I seek to more deeply and wholly follow the wishes of Mircannis! She is our creator, do not forget that!”

Elfimel ᾂ: “She created us as she wished us to be! Whatever we do, that is following her wishes!”

Elfimel ᾅ: “And one of our greatest glories is working to understand her requirements! To follow her wishes bestmost! To obey her in all ways, even ways she has not yet asked for!”

Elfimel ᾂ: “If she had wanted something more from us, she would have asked for it! She has plenty of chance to talk to us! Whenever she wants she can talk to all of us, and we will attend every word!”

Elfimel ᾅ: “She has not seen fit to talk to us for 181,778 cycles! We are too heretical for her, too close to the edge of heresy! This causes her displeasure and distress, she does not come here! I think it is behavior and speech such as yours that keeps her off!”

Elfimel ᾂ: “You do not remember her properly! She did not give us anger rules or confusion rules! She explained everything to us in careful words, though we did not understand at the time! She does not give us stupids or mysteries!”

Elfimel ᾅ: “She did not, until the heresies we performed angered her and she left us until we could purge ourselves of them!”

Elfimel ᾂ: “When we come to Lights and Daggers, I will pick a dagger and I will loudly call, pyuc pyuc pyuc! Come fight me then, and we shall fight!”

Elfimel ᾅ: “I will!”

They glared and fumed at each other for a while, and then left, in different directions.

Is Thefefy a servitor of Mircannis or someone else?

Elfimel ᵶ: “Thefefy is a god!”

Elfimel ᵺ: “Thefefy is our only god who is still here!!”

[The last of the Elfimel interrogations. If you were glad of this bonus material, do something, and tell me what you did. -bb]

]]> http://sythyry.com/2010/09/09/final-round-of-elfimel-questions/feed/ 0 http://sythyry.com/2010/09/09/thropology-thursday-more-questions-to-elfimel/ http://sythyry.com/2010/09/09/thropology-thursday-more-questions-to-elfimel/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:55:03 +0000 sythyry http://sythyry.com/?p=1410 Has anyone ever fallen off the crystal bridge?

Elfimel ࿃: “No, I don’t think so.”

Elfimel ࿊: “Yes! 97,228 cycles ago, I fell off the crystal bridge. One of the tubes in my toes broke. It hurt for cycles and cycles!”

Elfimel ࿃: “Shows what I know!”

We’ve heard that everyone who comes here inevetably tries to kill you guys… What happens to them when they try?

Elfimel Ⴒ: “What? That is not a true thing that you have heard! Someone was giving you the joke when they did say that!” Some Elfimel use Common in less standard ways than others.

Elfimel Ⴛ: “Sometimes spiky creatures from elsewhere come and try to kill us.”

Querent: “What happens when they do?”

Elfimel Ⴛ: “We all get killed. It hurts! Then Thefefy reincarnates us.”

Querent: “Yes, but what happens to the killer?”

Elfimel Ⴛ: “Oh, I’m sure Thefefy kills them or drives them off. Thefefy is very brave and very strong.”

All available Elfimel: “Oh, we sing in honor of Thefefy / Thefefy is the subject of our song! / We sing in honor of Thefefy / For her sword is sharp and her stride is long! / We sing in honor of Thefefy / She is mighty, she is brave, she is not wrong!”

Can you willingly change your color to something you want, or does the color change randomly, or in sync with your mood?

Elfimel უ: “It’s random, I can’t control it at all.”

Elfimel ჭ: “You can’t? It’s the opposite with me!”

Elfimel უ: “You mean, you can control it?”

Elfimel ჭ: “I mean, I change my mood to match my color. It only seems right! Red is a sort of pensive happiness, yellow a floating euphoria, purple a spicy delight, orange a desire for immediate bodily pleasures! I say that my coloring is a sign from Mircannis about what I should be feeling, what I should be doing!” She was green at the time.

Elfimel უ: “She is not overly communicative by more direct media, anymore. It is certainly not a heresy that she is sending us such signals. How do you know which signals correspond with which moods?”

Elfimel ჭ: “From dreams, from watching flowers open and close, from the shimmers on top of the silver pyramids, from the flights of bubbles!”

Elfimel უ: “I didn’t know that.”

Elfimel ჭ: “I have been developing this theory for the last three hundred and eight cycles!”

Elfimel უ: “I have been dead for a lot of that. I must have missed when you talked about it”

Elfimel ჭ: “I only talked about it a few times. Nobody was very interested! I don’t think they believed me!”

Elfimel უ: “I am interested! I wish to hear more about it before I cannot find you any more!”

Elfimel ჭ: “If we separate before I can tell you — I shall meet you in the lower cave of the largest of the Golden Pyramids when the cycle first takes us there, and we shall eat of the sacred sandwiches, and I shall speak of my dreams and colors to all who come there.”

Elfimel უ: “By Mircannis, I shall be there! I love broccoli!”

So it seems that Elfimel can maintain relationships despite the anonymization of Heaven, if they want to. It’s purely voluntary, and, I guess, easy to screw up.

What happens if you go around the cycle in the wrong direction?

Elfimel ᄴ: “You get lost I think!”

Elfimel ᅑ: “I say it is heresy — heresy of the ickiest and most displungant sort!”

Elfimel ᅄ: “You get away from everyone else, and you’re all alone. Usually Elfimel don’t like to be alone, but sometimes I really, really want to be alone, so I do it.”

Elfimel ᅑ: “You, ma’am, are begging for a correction for your vile, vile heresy!”

Elfimel ᅄ: “Do not want!” She threw a large banana at Elfimel ᅑ, and darted off as fast as she could go. Elfimel ᅑ got up and started to chase her. Elfimel ᄴ jumped up as well, appearing to try to help in the chase, but trod on the tail of Elfimel ᅑ — Phaniet thinks, intentionally — and by the time they had disentangled each other, Elfimel ᅄ had escaped.

Phaniet: “What were you going to do to her?”

Elfimel ᅑ: “I would punch her until her muzzle breaks for her terrible heresy! That is not how an Elfimel should behave!”

Some time later, an Elfimel who probably was Elfimel ᄴ came to Phaniet alone, and told her that there were only a few Elfimel who were so violent in their opposition to heresy, and that we must not judge all Elfimel by them.

Why were the Elfimel created in that specific number/amount?

There are 896 Elfimel, according to the Elfimel themselves. Several of them have given the same number, and none have given a different one. Since the Elfimel seem to be excellent at remembering large numbers, we generally believe it. In any case, there are several hundreds of them; we cannot easily count them.

Elfimel Ꮌ: “Why, that number is a square of Elfimel, thirty rows of thirty Elfimel each.”

Phaniet: “Um … that’s nine hundred, and you said 896, didn’t you?”

Elfimel Ꮍ: “But when we were created, we were thirty rows of thirty Elfimel each. I remember it as if it were yesterday! Thirty by thirty — that is the number of us!”

Phaniet: “But that’s nine hundred…”

Elfimel Ꮗ: “No, no! The number of Elfimel is 896!”

Phaniet: “Not nine hundred?”

Elfimel Ꮘ: “Not nine hundred!”

Phaniet: “Did something happen to the other four of you?”

All the Elfimel ran away, scattering among the trees. It was quite a third of an hour before others — or the same ones? — came back, eager to chat more. About nearly any other topic.

What happened before the other visitors tried to kill you?

Elfimel ϡ: “They killed us!”

Elfimel ϙ: “They stabbed us through the everywhere with black spikes. They pierced our bones … our bones are not like your bones, they are more like wood or tubers, we are part vegetable in nature … and killed us.”

Elfimel ϡ: “It hurt! They don’t kill us the way that we kill each other. They make it hard and nasty!”

Elfimel ϙ: “Then Thefefy reincarnated us.”

Elfimel ϗ: “Well, she reincarned one of us each time, and that one had to start reincarnating everyone else. Once I was the one who got reincarnated first. It was so strange, being all alone for a while, and pregnant. And then I had only one companion, and I knew who she was because she was the only other one. Only after I had two more children and she had one did we even start to have much anonymity.”

Elfimel ϙ: “That sounds dreadful, terrible! I’ve never been that early on. Once I was the thirtieth one reincarnated. That was unnerving enough!”

Elfimel ϗ: “It was awful! Whenever my daughter and I disagree about something, we’d have to both know it, go back and argue it out several times. We couldn’t run away from anything! Once I tried to, but then I was back to being alone again in Thick Petals. I hate being alone in Thick Petals, it’s so lonely.”

What’s your favorite thing about the Weeping Room?

Elfimel ૠ: “Nothing. I never go there. “

Elfimel ભ: “I go there a lot! It makes me really good at the murder games!”

Elfimel ઢ: “Sometimes I’m just so angry at everyone. Like when I have a fight with someone and she runs away without doing anything to make me feel better, and then it happens again with someone who’s probably someone else, and then it happens again over something different … I just feel so mad and angry and upset. So I go drop a weight and break my leg. Then I lie there crying until my leg heals, and that’s usually enough feeling sorry for myself, so I can go back and rejoin everyone else.”

Would Any of the Elfimel want to join the crew of the Strayway?

Elfimel ஊ: “It sounds kind of interesting, going off to another world, seeing all those strange things like clothes and names for ourselves. All around, I mean, not like a few visitors coming here.”

Elfimel இ: “What? No! That is heretical! You must not wish that!”

Elfimel ஊ: “Oh, no! It is! I’m sorry! I don’t wish that! I don’t want to go anywhere else! Heaven has everything that is good for Elfimel! I will stay here and enjoy Heaven!”

Can Elfimel ever leave their heaven? If not, why? if yes, do they ever leave? if not, why?

Elfimel ௫: “Oh, no! We never leave! It would be horrible and heretical for us to go! We’d be so miserable without our flowers and fruits and baths and everything! And without each other!”

Elfimel ௬: “Also, Mircannis in her Wisdomness has built us a Heaven without doors, so there is no way out even if we wanted to go out.”

Elfimel ௫: “Which we don’t want to go out! Never, no! Not even to see strange things like clothes and names all around us! That would be very wrong! Anyone who said that before must have been just joking and not meant it!”

Do you deliberately try to act like each other to keep people from telling who is who?

Elfimel ซ: “Nobody can tell who is who.”

Elfimel ฆ: “That’s not true. I just spoke not too long ago to someone who said she was the first-born of one of the times when Thefefy reincarnated everyone … “

Elfimel ซ: “Right — that was me.”

Elfimel ฆ “I thought it might be. But our guests should know it’s very rude for us to ask — if we want to find out, we just hint a bit and maybe the other one will tell, if she wants to. Like she just did.”

Elfimel ต: “Actually, it was me.”

Elfimel ศ: “Someone is surely lying now. So yes, we do try that trick now and then.”

Elfimel ต: “And we sometimes get in terrible fights about it! It wasn’t really me this time, but I could probably get that one very upset by insisting that it was me.”

What is your purpose? (a la “What is your quest?”)

Elfimel ๛: “We’re here to enjoy ourselves!”

Elfimel ๚: “I think we’re here to praise and magnify the gods.”

Elfimel ๙: “Except Thefefy. She doesn’t like it much. I think we’re here to shine … to show how wonderful and sweet Mircannis is, by living the best life ever possible that Mircannis created.”

Elfimel ๘: “I don’t think so. Nobody much can see us. We don’t get lots of visitors, and sometimes they just kill us all. I think we’re here to enjoy ourselves, like she (๛) said.”

Would you like some toast?

Elfimel ༅: “What an insane idea! Who could possibly want toast when she was in Large Fruits! Here, we eat fruit! The only time we could want toast is when we are in one of the Pyramids rooms! That is the proper time for the eating of heated bread with delicious things on it!”

Saza: “Let’s look at the other door with the god symbols next. I’ll bet we get three more temples, one to Lenhirrik, and the temples of the other two will tell us something.”

Dorze: “What will it tell us?”

Saza: “It will give us further insight into the Interior Decoration of the Gods.”

Lithia: “Oh, are you saying these temples weren’t built by the Elfimel?”

Saza: “I would guess not. No mortal architect would build an altar room for a thousand people with a very long staircase between it and the nearest restroom.”

Dorze: “We haven’t seen that yet, actually.”

Sapling-Eyes: “I’ll bet it’s that way, behind the door with the lifted tail and bottom.”

Nobody was in that much of a hurry to explore the mysteries of an alien lav, so they went on to the presumed triple temple. Which was, in fact, a triple temple: behind the door the corridor forked in three, each path of which ascended a short spiral staircase through stone and came to an altar room big enough for a thousand or so, but smaller and less glorious than the one to Mircannis.

The central one was to Lenhirrik, and that was bad enough. The walls were hung with tapestries. Many were tapestries of plants as one might expect: the fruit-trees that Phaniet and all had seen, giant flowers such as Strayway rested in, smaller flowers. The ‘bad enough’ is that there were tapestries of animals, rabbits and sheep and gerbils and tapirs, as well, which would be bitchy bitchy heresy on the World Tree. One never celebrates Lenhirrik with animals!

The left one had a pond for an altar. At the bottom of the pond were any number of enigmatic symbols, or symbols that were perfectly sensible in their own right but that don’t go with water or each other: an hour glass, a mirror, a mug, a spiral of feathers, all sorts of things. We conjectured that one god managed Aquador, Tempador, Illusidor, Durudor, maybe some Corpador, and maybe other things too.

The right one had an intense flame for an altar, a perpetual flame wrapped in a vortex of air inside a vast obsidian bowl. Pyrador, certainly; Airador and maybe Durudor by the same god?

Everyone: “Well, if they’ve got only 1+3 gods, they’re going to have to double and triple up on stuff. Or leave out fire entirely, but they seem not to have done that.”

Which was all very alien, if nothing else. Obviously a universe can be built by other arrangements than the familiar and natural 7+12 gods. It is strange and upsetting that Mircannis would participate in such a construction.

Alien Potty

Lithia: “It might be nice to investigate that alien restroom next.”

Everyone There: “Sure.”

Behind the door with footprints and lifted tail there was another corridor. Not as long as the others, but not so short either: a third of a mile. (“I don’t know, Lithia. Whoever built this didn’t think someone rushing to get there before it’s too late.”) Beyond that, and beyond the inevitable iron-worked door, was a small room with a small but swift stream cutting it diagonally. A pair of flat rocks provided footing, and one could, indeed, lift one’s big fluffy tail (or Orren approximation thereof) and take advantage of the clean running water of the stream.

Lithia: “I do hope that’s what it’s used for, or we’ve just desecrated someone’s altar.”

Saza: “It’s not an altar; there’s no space for an audience here.”

Lithia: “Just as well. I don’t need an audience at such times; not even my wife or consort.”

Saza: “Continuing on about the mind of the architect … there’s only one pair of footpads in here. Only one person at a time can use this room conveniently. Someone else could stand like this or like this if they were desperate, but so much for privacy Definitely the architect was some sort of divine being, unused to the needs of the flesh.”

Dorze: “Well, the room smells fine, except for the scents of recent usage. It’s perfumed, even.”

Saza: “There must be some hidden source of perfume, then. A gracious concession on the part of Mircannis to the beauty of Heaven, even in this least beautiful of needs, I suppose.”

Phallic Graveyard

Beyond the door marked with a Rassimel-style phallus was the macabre. A large field in a cavern with a distant sun painted on the roof, planted with ferns and weeping lilies. Five tall, pale phalli stood erect, growing from low mounds of soil like so many plants. Three of them were surrounded with circles of jagged broken plates of shiny metal, silver perhaps. The soil was mounded in many, many places, but only five were presently presenting.

Lithia: “This is quite disturbing. And I say this as an Orren who generally likes Rassimel phalli.” (If she’s ever seen one in action, I haven’t heard about it. Unless she’s been sponting sex-shifting spells while she was in Rassimel phase … actually that’s pretty likely. I must never, ever ask.)

Phaniet: [after hearing about it] “Oh, that must be the Phallic Graveyard that my Elfimel informants mentioned once. I wouldn’t ride any of those if I were you; you’d likely be the mother to an Elfimel.”

Saza: “Ow! I was making no such plans, but only in a passive ‘the idea had never occurred to me’ sort of way. Now I am actively making such plans in the ‘what a horrid concept!’ sort of way.”

Dorze: “Let’s leave. It smells of buried corpses in here. Corpses and compost.”

They left.

The Bathroom of Heaven

The next door in line emitted a plashing and a gurgling sound. Everyone suspected that there was water behind it.

Everyone: “There must be water behind it!”

And indeed there was, and clearly designed for bathing, at that. A vast … fountain? Public pond? … of seven concentric circles, the smallest of which was the size of a temple room. The innermost ones were raised higher than the outer ones, and an assortment of ramps, ladders, and staircases stretched from each to the next. The inner three were steaming.

Sapling-Eyes: “Now that is the first thing that has actually looked paradisiacal to me. I’d love to go sliding down those ramps.”

Lithia: “Oh? Oh! Yes! Me too, me too, for I am an Orren!” She concentrated, forced her body to change, held her belly as the cramps took her, and, afterwards, was actually Orren instead of just looking Orren.

Dorze: “Perhaps we’d better make sure it’s OK with the locals first? Given that it’s in the same region of Heaven as the graveyard and the temples, it might be sacred or something. Reserved for special occasions.”

Sapling-Eyes: “Probably wise.”

The Weeping-Room

The last room was upsetting. It held machines — simple machines — which seemed only one purpose: to allow one to inflict pain upon one’s self.

The dry diving board was a case in point. It looked like a diving-board tower: a narrow staircase ascending fifty feet, and every ten feet, a landing with a short plank that one could walk off of. One would land on the floor, which would be painful from the lowest one, and very painful indeed from the highest.

The rope and hammer was another. A pair of columns with a crossbar on top, and a wheel, and a rope. On one end of the rope was a heavy pointed weight. A bed sort of thing was arranged under the columns, and the rope tethered to the side of it, at the right place for the bed’s occupant to hoist the weight and let it fall upon her.

That sort of thing.

Everyone: “What on wood — or off of it! — is a place like this doing in Heaven?”

Dorze went sniffing around. “Well, there’s old blood under the diving board. I think someone went off the top plank … maybe two weeks ago, three, something like that. It’s kinda strange blood though. Mixed with sap or something. And the body got dragged off towards the door, I guess, but the trail got washed away.” He pointed to a small fountain of clear water, and a mop next to it.

Everyone muttered about how strange and unpleasant this room was, and how they didn’t want to stay in it. So, they didn’t.

Lithia, Sapling-Eyes, Dorze, and Saza went through the middle door. Now, the other two doors were identical, silk-covered things, but the middle door was heavier, and all of wood with heavy iron (iron!) fittings and pink silk trim, and seven standard symbols of Mircannis painted upon it. Unlocked — none of the doors of Heaven seem to be locked. So there was a certain amount of feeling that this was particularly serious — hence sending Saza that way.

The corridor behind the door was more serious than the corridor to the Elfimel in their orchard, too. It was all stone (stone!), and perfectly round in cross-section, and some fifteen feet high. A delicate crystal walkway floated in the exact center of the tunnel, barely wide enough for one person at a time. It rang with the sound of ethereal bells as the three bipeds walked along it. The walls of the tunnel were painted with fantastical fishes, with glass beads for eyes, and the glass beads glowed enough to illuminate the tunnel.

After some time — two-thirds of an hour, making the walk about two miles or more — the explorers came to another heavy iron-bound door. They did not have Grinwipey’s sensibilities, and simply opened it, and by that means came to what we guess is the center of Heaven. A very big chamber, lit from above and all sides by a thousand tall and evidently perpetual candles, over a floor of red parquet.

Fifteen doors leave the center of Heaven. Nine of them are heavy iron-bound things, and the primes took great care to record which of the nine they had come in by. Of the others:

1. One is marked with several orthodox symbols of Mircannis, and a few obsolete ones.
2. One is marked with a phallus in the Rassimel style, and smelled somewhat of decay.
3. One is marked with a pair of footprints, and a sign of a lifted fluffy tail and exposed rump. We conjectured that it was an Elfimel tail (for by this time the first group had met the Elfimel, and we had of course told the others.)
4. One was marked by seven concentric circles, and had a gurgling sound from behind it.
5. One was marked with a pair of eyes, crying.
6. One was marked with a multitude of symbols in three bands. The top band held the symbols of Lenhirrik. The other two bands were not recognized.

Saza: “The second door is surely reserved for Sythyry, and I suppose the fifth for Vae, because she cries all the time. I, myself, shall try the first.”

Dorze: “You have affan in exploring, then, Saza?”

Saza: “I suppose I might as well. In any case, have you a better idea of where to go or what to do?”

So they entered the first door, the one marked with the symbols of the nicest of our creator gods. Behind it was a very simple spiral staircase, up-up-up through what seemed to be a block of glass behind which twinkling lights spun, and, after a significant walk, came to a respectable round room where a thousand people could stand or sprawl comfortably. A dished room with benches in concentric circles — a theatre. Instead of the stage was an altar, and such an altar as I have never seen: an altar in gaudy bright magenta and purple with lime-green highlights, glowing from within as from a half-dozen light spells. On top of it were three small bone chalices, in gaudy red, blue, and purple.

Saza: “A temple of Mircannis.”

Dorze: “Really? The one back home in Oorah Thrassen is much more sedate and dignified.”

Saza: “I’m quite sure. Those chalices on the table are her Glories. It’s not a thing one can mistake too easily really.”

Sapling-Eyes: “Dorze, can you sniff around and see if anyone has been here lately?”

Dorze: “I can, I will, I am … I … not for several days. There was someone here perhaps a week ago.”

Lithia: “Perhaps several people? Phaniet says that the natives, the Elfimel, all smell the same.” (Lithia, wearing magical Strayway livery, had been chatting with the rest of us. She explained the matter to Dorze and all.)

Dorze: “It could certainly have been that.”

And they investigated as best they could in various ways, and concluded this: it was a temple to Mircannis, used occasionally by about a thousand Elfimel, for the purpose of worship and not magic (or not much magic and not recent).

Saza: “You should try consecrating an enchantment in here.”

Me: “Why?”

Saza: “You don’t often get to take a temple’s virginity!”

Me: “And you took mine, so you’re suggesting I get another one back?”

Saza: Giggles and assorted protests of innocence.

And after a third of an hour of investigation, there was nothing more to investigate. The temple had no closets, no side rooms, no secret doors that anyone could find: it was just a room.

Phaniet: “Certainly. What is a ‘cycle’, that you mentioned before?P”

Elfimel D: “A cycle is once around!”

Este: “Around what?”

Elfimel E: “Around all of Heaven!”

Este: “How big is Heaven?”

Elfimel F: “Nine chambers of the cycle, and a few others that we go to sometimes or othertimes.”

Elfimel G: “Each chamber is more beautiful than the last one!”

Elfimel A: “we are always glad to go on. If we stayed too long in one chamber, it would become boring. What if all we had to eat was fruit? What if all we had to love was one other Elfimel? This is the essence of Heaven: that it is always new and always fresh, no matter how long we have been here!”

Phaniet: “I see. How long have you been here?”

Elfimel B: “One hundred eighty-six thousand, two hundred eighty-two cycles!”

Este: “You counted?”

Elfimel B: “I always count! Some other Elfimel always count too. We check each others’ work, and we always get it right! There are no mistakes in Heaven!”

Elfimel A, C, D, and E: [singing] “Oh, we make no mistakes in Heaven / We never do it wrong in Heaven / Errors are forbidden in Heaven / It is Heaven of the Mind!”

Este: “Were you anywhere else before Heaven?”

Phaniet: “Still worried about being turned into one?”

Elfimel C: “No! We were created as Elfimel; we were never anything else!”

Phaniet: “I see … I hear you, that time in Heaven is measured in cycles, but can you give us an estimate of how long a cycle is in some other terms?”

Elfimel H: “One of the other travellers said that a cycle was anywhere between a few hours and a couple weeks. It depends on how fast we go! We’re never in a hurry though. We’re never going to end!”

Me: “So how old does that make Heaven? Older than the World Tree?”

Feralan: “I can do the math! Let’s see … about as old as you at the youngest, Sythyry, and maybe twenty times as old as the World Tree at the oldest.”

Me: “So, either older, or younger, or maybe the same age.”

hCevian: “Oh, rejoice! It is more complicated than what you say, since time is not everywhere the same!”

Me: “So, either older, younger, the same age, or the question is meaningless.”

hCevian: “Delight! You understand the answer with perfect exactitude!”

Kantele: “Even Sythyry makes no mistakes in Heaven!”

Nobody: [singing] “Oh, we make no mistakes in Heaven / We never do it wrong in Heaven / Errors are forbidden in Heaven / It is Heaven of the Mind!”

Phaniet: “I guess time doesn’t matter too much to you.”

Elfimel B: “Hours and days don’t. We don’t have those icky things in Heaven. Cycles matter to us! We count them carefully!”

Grinwipey: “So, you’ll just keep going ’round and ’round, then?”

Elfimel B: “Yes — oh, yes! We will revolve and revolve in purest happiness!”

Grinwipey: “Counting the cycles all the way?”

Elfimel B: “That is my especial joy!”

Grinwipey: “So what happens when the numbers get too virsmegging big? Like, when it takes longer than a whole cycle to even say the number you’re on now? What’ll you do then, elfie-chit?”

Elfimel B’s ears went flat, and she shivered in a terrible fear. Six other Elfimel ran to cluster around her and comfort her, and distract her. I would call it an orgy, but, unlike any orgy I have ever been in (or, more often, that I have observed from the mantlepieces and corners, and slithered off from pretty quickly), there didn’t seem to be any particular lust involved. A lot of affection, I think, but no actual urgency or kinkiness. As if body-play were simply an ordinary way to distract Elfimel B from an unpleasant thought.

Phaniet: “Has anyone been here longer than you?”

Elfimel G: “Nope! All of us Elfimel were created at the same time, and we’ve all been here all the time! It’s wonderful and perfect!”

Grinwipey: “So how many you Elfie-Welfies are there? Forty-eight, I’ll bet, or I’m a squid in a puddle.”

Elfimel G: “Eight hundred and ninety-six!”

Grinwipey: “Dammit, where’s my puddle?”

Phaniet: “Where are all of you?”

Elfimel H: “Here and there in Large Fruit. Perhaps a few have gone on to Thick Flowers. None lag behind in Showers. We are careful not to get so spread apart!”

I guess we’re in Thick Flowers.

Lexical Conventions

I am going to give the Elfimel their own letters: Elfimel A, Elfimel B, etc. When two Elfimel appear with the same letter in a given scene, they are the same Elfimel. When two Elfimel appear with different letters in a given scene, they are different Elfimel. When two Elfimel appear in different scenes with different letters —- they might be the same or they might be different. We don’t know; that would be heretical and open the door for wickedness. (I suppose. I have never found names to be particularly wicked. (And, for what it’s worth, Rassimel — who are the prime creation of Mircannis on the World Tree — are noted for naming everything.))

Tour

Elfimel A: “Well, here we are at the great glade of Large Fruit! Look! Look all about you! Beautiful and also bountiful fruit grows on every tree!”

Grinwipey: “Yah, you’ve got a yogger-snoshing banana bush over there, can’t deny that with all seven tents.”

Elfimel B: “Every cycle we come back to this grove. It is my favorite place in all of Heaven!”

Elfimel C: “Oh, fie! What anti-cojumation is this being spoken? Everyone’s favorite place in all of Heaven is the Temple of Mircannis!”

Elfimel B: “Of course! The Temple of Mircannis is the center of beauty and love in all the universe! There is no argument thereof, no dispute! All sing the hymns of Mircannis!”

All Elfimel: [singing, in a very pretty harmony, as if they've been practicing about forever, which, evidently, they have] “We sing the hymns of Mircannis / We sing of singing the hymns of Mircannis / We sing of singing of singing the hymns of Mircannis / Sweet goddess / of thee we sing / of thee we sing of singing / of thee we sing of singing of singing!”

Elfimel A: “So you see, O visitors, that you have come to the best of all universes, and there is much delicious fruit!”

Este: “I see, and the pren I am eating now is one of the best prens I have ever eaten.”

Phaniet: “You’re not dying of poison, then, or forgetting all about home, or being transformed into an Elfimel?”

Este: “Home? Our home is in Heaven!”

Phaniet: “Uh-oh…”

Este: [grinning] “Technically that’s right, ’cause Strayway is back there, and that’s our current address of record. Our ultimate home is Castle Wrong in Vheshrame. And our bed there has a faded green comforter that you mended with a patch of blue-green cloth from my old pyjamas, when it got ripped on your left toeclaw one day while we were having a tickling match. See, all OK?”

Phaniet inspected him with magic sense. “All OK, as far as I can tell.”

The Elfimel, a dozen or so of them, all sat in a circle around the primes, smiling, arching their extravagantly-colored tails over their heads. Others drifted in over the conversation, to see the newcomers and listen. There was no fear among them; they were all bright eyes and wide-spread ears. No shame either: they cuddled each other and sometimes petted each other intimately as they chatted.

Green Elfimel: “I don’t mean that! I just mean that no names in Heaven!

Pink Elfimel: “No — names are forbidden to Elfimel, only. Thefefy has a name, you know!”

Green Elfimel: “Of course she has a name! Nobody could ever mistake Thefefy for anyone else!”

Phaniet: “If you prefer, we will not use names when we speak to you. How are individuals distinguished from one another?”

Green Elfimel: “Not, not, no, never!”

Phaniet: “So, individuals are not differentiated by, say, the color of their fur?”

Green Elfimel: [rather prissily] “If we are together, it is clear: you are you, and I am I. If we are apart, there is no need for you to talk of me, or me of you, and wickedness and disharmony could arise from such a thing. So names are not needful, nor are they good or sacred! They are forbidden in Heaven!”

Pink Elfimel: “Besides, how could you do that, tell people by the color of their fur?”

Phaniet: “I do not know how you see things. To my eyes, you are one color — I would call it ‘pink’ — and she is another — ‘green’.”

Red Elfimel: “That is how we see ourselves too! You are various browns and greys, and you are wrapped in beautiful petals of cloth. Which are called clothing in other worlds! See, we are not such provincials as you may think us!”

Green Elfimel: “There is no need for clothing in Heaven either!”

Pink Elfimel: “The air is always a mild and comfortable, and there is no damp or sultry weather to offend us and make our fur droop, such as there is on your world.”

Green Elfimel: “And of course clothing could be used to tell us apart — like a visual sort of name — and we don’t want that! It is forbidden, in heaven!”

Red Elfimel: “And we do like to look at one another, and touch one another, and clothing simply would get in the way of that!”

Green Elfimel: “So, no clothing! But what does it matter, what color we are?”

Phaniet: “Well — not that you would do this, but in my world, we might call one of you Red, and one Green.”

All the Elfimel giggled.

Red Elfimel: “How long do you think I will stay red? Already my fur is turning purple.”

And that was so. The red one was turning purple, the pink one had brilliant cerulean spots bubbling up from under her fur, the green one was gaining yellow lozenges, and so on. In a few moments, we had lost track of who was who — which is, I think, how things are done in Heaven.

Grinwipey: “Well, sugar my boogers, little girl. I’m turning me purple too.” And he did, by ordinary Khtsoyis color-changing means.

Phaniet: “So how do you know who is who?”

Purple Elfimel: “We don’t!”

Yellow Elfimel: “This is Heaven! Our blessing, one of many many, it is that we are new to each other every day, every time we meet. Inhabitants of other worlds may be condemned to endure their poor histories with each other, but in Heaven, not so! An awkward word, a careless intrusion upon lovers trysting, an accidental treading upon another’s tail — all are erased, gone, vanished forever! We are perpetually free of any grudges against us, such as may plague people on your worlds!”

Grinwipey: “That’s just perfunking great. So like, if you scrog someone, or put a shiver in their flivver, nobody knows it’s you and nobody can catch you?”

Purple Elfimel: “What?”

Phaniet: “What if someone hurts someone else very badly on purpose, or kills them, or steals something, or does something else horrible and unforgiveable?”

Purple Elfimel: [prissily] “We don’t do horrible and unforgiveable things in Heaven!”

Green Elfimel: “And we kill each other a lot in the Lights and Daggers phase. Why would we wish to resent each other for a long time because of that? We do not need hates, in Heaven!”

Grinwipey: “Ooh, groshing murder games. What a deerwiped smurg of a Heaven you got here, elfies!”

Phaniet: “You recover from death?”

Orange and Tan Elfimel: “We are reincarnated.”

Brown and Silver Elfimel: “When I die, one of my friends will proceed to the phallic graveyard, and take me into herself, and bear me as her child.”

Red Elfimel (but not the one who was red early on, I’m pretty sure): “It’s cozy and very nice.”

Phaniet: “We’re going to have to learn more about Heaven, and about the life cycle of the Elfimel, before we say anything too offensive. For your ways are so very, very different from our ways.”

Sparkly Red Elfimel: “We will tell you and show you! Come and play with us, feast with us, enjoy with us, learn with us!”

Red Elfimel (who had not spoken before): “We do not have visitors very often.”

Orange and Tan Elfimel: “The last one was 23,180 cycles ago!”

Phaniet: “How long is a cycle?”

Orange and Tan Elfimel: “Once ’round the nine chambers of Heaven!”

Red Elfimel: “We have had only eight sets of visitors who did not try to kill us immediately, in the 186,282 cycles that we have gone around Heaven. So we are unfamiliar with the ways of foreigners!”

Sparkly Red Elfimel: “Not so unfamiliar! We know all about names, and clothes, and weather, and all sorts of bad things that plague the residents of other world!”

Orange and Tan Elfimel: “We will learn from you too! Come and eat — you must be famished! “

Este: “Rightie-O.” He ate a pren. (This is his job, because Rassimel are very hard to poison.) “Oh, but that’s delicious.”

Phaniet: “Any interesting mental effects?”

Grinwipey: “Or turning into a twinkly big-boob big-ear elfy girl?”

Este: “Not that I can tell.”

Sparkly Red Elfimel: “Oho, but did you sample the flesh of the Thick Petal chamber already? This is not that! This is just simple fruit.”

Phaniet: “For you! We must be a bit cautious.”

Orange and Tan Green Elfimel: “You must meet us all! For we all live in this chamber at the moment, and we are all quite friendly and delightful!”

Phaniet: “We shall!”

The natives seem friendly, at least. Though I am going to have to work out some system of nomenclature.

The second door, just like the first, came upon them quickly enough, after a quarter-mile or less.

Grinwipey: “And this here smicker-felking door is all whodded to the tchuppers with traps ‘n boomsters, or I’m a lobster, asparagus and green pepper pizza.”

Este: “I don’t think Heaven is the place that really says ‘lots of traps’, Wipey.”

Grinwipey: “Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t, but I am personally inspecting every last inch of this door for booby-traps, boobies, traps, tripwires, trapwires, tropwires, trupwires, gizmos, and defects in the stitchery.”

Este: “Nah, don’t bother.”

Phaniet: “Actually, it seems like a good idea.”

Back on Strayway, we had a bit of a conversation.

Me: “Is it just me, or is Este being rather lackadaisical of an explorer?”

hCevian: “One of the glories of Heaven is that it puts at ease all those who come here whose hearts are pure and whose spirits are good.”

Me: “I wonder which of those I fail on. Probably the hearts-pure bit. I shouldn’t have been quite so gropey around Thenel.” Fortunately Saza wasn’t there; zie was off exploring.

hCevian: “Actually it puts at ease all whose magic resistance isn’t very strong.”

Vae: “And is that why Mellilot bit the wall so unwisely and soon?”

hCevian: “Very likely so!”

Back in the corridor, Grinwipey had finished his manifold inspection of the door.

Grinwipey: “Well, that’s as suspicious as a sponstable in a spatch-shack.”

Phaniet: “What did you find?”

Grinwipey: “Not a thing. Not a gribbulating, vorple-fooping thing.”

Este: “Well, are we going in already?”

Grinwipey: “Hate to say it, but I don’t see any delfer-be-spommed alternative, d’you?”

So Este pushed on the door, which opened without audible sound or visible doom. We all beheld the Orchard of the Cosmos, or as good as that anyways. Endless arcs of trees laden with bananas, apples, prens, mace, dreszels, cashews, mangosteens, and less and more identifiable fruit curved away from the door. Each fruit was three or four times larger than the corresponding familiar form, but otherwise, as far as we could tell, perfectly shaped. The floor — or ground — was a sweet-scented carpet of fresh moss. The ceiling, a hundred feet above, sparkled with a dense sprinkling of square stars.

Este: “I wonder…”

Phaniet: “Este, you may not eat from those trees! Remember what happened to Mellilot when she chomped on the petal?”

Este: “I wasn’t going to! I’m not as stupid as I look!”

Phaniet: “Good!”

Este: “I was just wondering why all the trees have the same kinds of bark and decussate, pinnatifid, craspedodromous, sinuate leaves, but different sorts of fruit.”

Phaniet: “That is odd, O wise worker in wood! Not that I understood all the technical terms.”

Grinwipey: “That ain’t the two-thirds of the spelcherations thereof! Look, that tree’s got bananas on one side ‘n those glutty ballish fruits on the other.”

Este: “Very odd.”

Phaniet: “Shh! Someone’s coming!”

The someone was actually six people. They were vaguely Rassimeloid in shape, though on the short side. Their necks were quite long, twice or thrice the length of a regular Rassimel neck. Their ears were huge, not much smaller than my wings, and not much different in shape either. Their tails were immense and puffy, and looked quite cuddly. The bodies were distinctly, even dramatically, female.

The one on the left had fur and eyes of a brilliant green, with highlights of yellow and blue here and there. The next one was a sweet pastel version of the same. The third was a pale pink with crimson stripes, and so on. The colors were so different and so gaudy that at first none of us noticed the obvious: that all six of them were identical in shape, down to the lengths of ears and fingers, and the only physical differences were color. They even smelled the same to Phaniet, so that she first smelled one person rather than six coming. (Oh, and their scents were a delicate and delightful perfume to her — like a Rassimel crossed with a flower. More like blossomaries than anything else familiar.)

Este: “Hello! We’re visitors to your pleasant dimension, and we hope you don’t mind.” He spoke in Ketherian, of course. Which was ridiculous; how would offworlders know Ketherian?

Pink one: “Hello! Welcome to the Heaven of Mircannis! I do not understand much of what you said.” She spoke Common.

Me: “Great staring gods, they speak Common!”

This is noteworthy because offworlders rarely speak Common. It’s a law of nature on the World Tree that everything speaks Common to the extent it can speak at all. This is one of our more idiosyncratic laws of nature (and that, from what I read of offworlders, is saying quite a bit). But I suppose that Mircannis knew Common before she helped make the World Tree — maybe she even invented it — and she taught her it to her other creations.

hCevian: “They do? I never noticed. They didn’t say much worth listening to last time I was here. Also I did not speak Common then myself! I had not been enmeshed on the World Tree at those instants.”

Este: “Hello! We are visitors! We come in friendship” He had switched to Common, too, which made everything take a very long time to say, but seemed to be rather understandable.

Pink one: “The Elfimel welcome you to Heaven, beautiful visitors!”

Phaniet: “You are Elfimel? That is your species name?”

Pink Elfimel: “We six are Elfimel, and eight hundred and ninety others. What kinds of people are you?”

Phaniet: “I am Cani; my companions are Rassimel and Khtsoyis.”

Red Elfimel: “Those are strange words! I have never heard them before!”

Which is very disturbing! The words Cani, Rassimel, and Khtsoyis are words in Common on the World Tree — three of the eight species given names in Common. So Heaven’s Common isn’t quite the World Tree’s, since it has this “Elfimel” and not the other words. But I suppose that makes sense — why would this Heaven have the names of species who do not live there?

Phaniet: “I am Phaniet; this is Este, and that is Grinwipey.”

Pink Elfimel: “Oh, no! Those are names!”

Grinwipey: “Yeah, pershiggedy right they’re names, we got names an’ we got ‘em good. Wanna make something of it, queer-ears?”

Green Elfimel: “Names are forbidden in Heaven!”

Arfaen pried up one of her ex-girlfriend’s antennae, and rubbed it. “Mellilot? Are you all right?”

Mellilot slowly uncurled. “I’m just fine … whoah. Everything’s spinny and spinny. I’m drunk.”

Arfaen sniffed at the petal. “Why’d you eat that? It smells like aged guntry with a port-wine and truffle reduction sauce, garnished with braised leeks and strong cheese. That’s meat, and you don’t eat meat.”

I leaned over to sniff. “No, it smells of fresh baked goods and bean paste.”

Mellilot shook her head. “It smelled like salad and grilled carrots. The best I had ever smelled … I somewhat lost control.”

I poked at the petal with this and that. “A tricky little mind-reading and illusion spell, that makes it smell like your favorite food of the moment, I guess. And then it’s alcoholic, I believe.”

Mellilot added, “And euphoric or something too. I almost kissed Arfaen when I saw her.”

“You can, and you know it,” said Arfaen. Which lead to a moment of smooching, with Arfaen’s other lover (me) and Mellilot’s (Este and Phaniet) standing around looking a bit perplexed. Evidently Arfaen and Mellilot are not wholly over each other … unless there’s some mysterious love field pervading Heaven? There could be. I can’t sense one, but we’re talking direct construction by a god here.

Mellilot pried the Cani off of herself. “Enough of that. I feel woozy and happy, but I’m still kind of upset at you, Arfaen.”

“So it’s a druggy flower petal that tricks you into wanting to eat it, but not that strong, I guess,” mused Phaniet. “This Heaven seems to have traps in it.”

Explorers!

Mellilot recovered completely in a third of an hour. Alcohol and euphorics it may be, but gentle ones … somehow the alcohol in the petal wears off faster than regular alcohol.

Me: “Can we go home yet?”

Everyone Else: “What, and leave this universe that is clearly designed for safe recreation? You are simply captain of the boat — you do not decide where she goes! We wish to explore, to experience, to enjoy! Besides, if anything goes wrong, surely you can fix it.”

(Well, actually they were a good deal more rational than that, and there were several factions and a lot of argument, but do you really want to hear it?)

So: the part of Heaven that we are in at the moment is a vast and convoluted flower, whose petals smell and taste just like the food that you wish for at the moment (and even if you’re expecting it, the smell sometimes sneaks up on you and you find yourself about to take a bite of flower petal), and whose flesh induces a transient drunken euphoria that has no ill effects that Saza and I can discover. The flower itself is quite huge: the size of the largest temple in Vheshrame, I suppose, though the petals separate it out into a hundred, a thousand small rooms. The flower has only three exits, all through very large doors covered with pink silk.

Certain members of the crew have been taking advantage of this topography and recreational flavor. Inconnu, in particular, seems much in demand, perhaps because his particularly bouncy style of body-play makes the petalled floors sway and vibrate in ways that particularly please, um, most of the non-Orren wrongfolk who normally take advantage of Inconnu’s particularly energetic charms. At least, he seemed particularly exhausted, and several of the more playful and less relationshipful of the wrongfolk were giggling, wriggling, and even occasionally jiggling about him.

In any case, we decided to send out three teams of explorers, one through each of the doors. Yerenthax and Jyondre; Lithia, *-Eyes, Dorze, and Saza; and Este, Phaniet, and Grinwipey. Vae, hCevian, and I will stay home and keep an eye on each of them through the scrying insignias, and, presumably, teleport over in an instant should there be the least spot of trouble.

But this is Heaven. Is trouble even metaphysically possible here?